Releasable, refastenable mechanical fastening systems are common in today's society. For example, mechanical fasteners, sometimes referred to as hook and loop fasteners, are useful in wearable garments, such as disposable absorbent articles, such as diapers, training pants, incontinence products, and feminine care products. Mechanical fasteners can offer a variety of functional benefits to such products, such as the ability to fasten the article about one's body or garment; the ability to easily remove the garment following use; and the ability to refasten the garment multiple times, such as upon discovering that a diaper is clean following inspection.
However, prior art fastening systems have been deficient in various regards. For example, mechanical fastening systems used to secure disposable absorbent articles about a wearer are subjected to stressing forces during movement of the wearer. For example, hook and loop systems that secure diapers and training pants to a toddler are stressed as the toddlers crawl, run, jump, and otherwise move. These stressing forces can cause the hook components to pull away from the loop components, urging the hook components to disengage from the loop components. As prior art hook components are relatively rigid and non-extensible, and prior art loop fibers are relatively non-extensible, there exists little “play” in the connections between the hook and loop components. Consequently, the aforementioned stressing forces often result in the hook and loop components disengaging from each other, causing a garment to come loose from a wearer. Moreover, such stressing forces can cause what are often very thin loop fibers to break, rendering them unable to properly reengage hook components, such as upon an attempt to refasten a training pant or diaper about a wearer after inspection by a caregiver. A mechanical fastening system that overcomes these performance problems is lacking in the prior art. Furthermore, disposable absorbent articles that avoid these fastening issues are needed.